Kind of a suggestion here. How about putting in a rule about copying someone else's farm and entering it as your own? I'm just curious because with the exception of 1 or 2 things someone has entered a duplicate of a friend of mine's farm that she did last year. The things that are changed are minimal; the balance is exactly the same. Just thinking you might want to add that as a rule in order to "protect" the designer's work.

Hi lynnetimpeiro

This is a very sensitive subject and rears its ugly head every now and again, sometimes due to just thoughtlessness on the designers’ behalf that they didn’t think to ask permission to copy a design. There are those that are very protective of their designs and others who offer their farms up for inspiration or allow copying of a design and are honoured to think someone else thought their design so great that they wanted to create it for themselves, thereby inspiring others.

Over the years every now and then we get complaints that someone has copied another person’s farm design and they expect, demand even, that the forum moderators do something about it, especially when it comes to the contests run here.

Let us be very clear here. Once you post your farm link, whether it be here in the forum, on your own wall, in a group, that then makes your farm accessible by anyone who can see it to go to any of your farms that are not private. They then can, if they choose, copy your design without asking your permission. The ideal thing to happen would be that if someone wants to copy your design, they should at the very least, out of courtesy, ask your permission, particularly if they want to enter it into any contest, here or in groups. However, they do not always do this and there is nothing stopping them from doing it if your farm is not private. There is no copyright for any of your farm designs.

It has also been said that we can prove who designed a farm first. This is not true. There is nothing in your farm data that will tell us when a farm was designed or in fact who designed it. A post on the forum may only prove you were the first to post the picture, not that you designed it first. The same goes for Facebook pictures and with those, anyone can go to anyone’s farm and take a photo and then, as long as they have your farm link and the farm is not private, design a farm and enter it into a contest at a later date. As stated before, if your link is public, wherever it is, anyone can get to your farm to copy from you. Someone could design a farm, never post it on the forum or take a picture (or have it go missing or delete it), then someone else could visit their farm, copy that design and claim it was theirs because they posted a picture first, when in fact that wasn’t true. There is no way to know with absolute certainty who designed what or when.

We don’t ask members to go search all the old contest threads to make sure they are not copying anyone else’s design simply because for the most part they would find it too time consuming and the old pictures do go missing so this is not possible. Pictures on the forum, particularly from Facebook, go missing all the time, sometimes due to the owner changing the privacy of the photo, sometimes because the link breaks and sometimes just down to the age of the photo. When this happens, you have no way of knowing if someone has already designed something previously as you can no longer see the image. The only images that are permanent on the forum are the ones used to help people on the forum, for example, the Game Guide, and the winner’s photos for contests. Winners photos for contests are posted without farm links so they cannot be visited.

We always prefer designers to come up with original designs for the contest, that we have never seen before. Originality is always best. We do appreciate that some like to use cross stitch patterns and photos to help them design and it could be that in those instances designs could end up very similar if not identical in some circumstances. There will also be those times that someone does have permission to copy a design and enter it into a contest.

Having explained our position when it comes to copying and that we cannot with absolute certainty prove one way or another who designed what first, I hope you will understand why there will never be a rule to prevent someone copying another’s designs. We prefer that people do not copy others designs for the purpose of entering into a contest, but this is not something we can prevent either.

Thank you Mary. I understand it now. I'm not a designer; have no artistic ability at all, but just when I saw this one woman's farm that I knew (it is one of my favorite designs), it made me wonder how someone could do that. Again, thank you for your time in explaining all of this to me. I wish you and the other moderators (and families) a very happy and blessed Christmas.

So sad to hear you are discontinuing the farm decorating contests on a monthly basis. I just noticed your announcement in this months rules. I am sure the contests are a lot of work for the judges, just know we have appreciated your efforts. Thanks for liking my farms, it has been great fun and a welcome opportunity to earn Farm Cash.